The bizarre, pathetic doings of spiritual artists, vegetarians, mediums, astrologers, and magicians intertwine with the lives of Richard Wagner, Baden Powell, Major Douglas, G.K. Chester¬ton, C.G. Jung, and other surprising notables. But there is a sinister side to this absorbing saga of folk dancing, health foods, and rejection of capitalist rationality: search for purity of 'blood' as well as purity of bowels, allied with the conviction that all unwelcome features of modern life are consummations of a malignant conspiracy.
In this meticulously-researched history of occultism since 1918, James Webb examines the 'Illuminated Politics' which saw its greatest triumph in the Hitler regime. After Hitler, occultism continued to pervade art and literature, and ex¬pressed itself in such movements as the Beatniks, Hippies, Situationists, and Anti-psychiatry.